The past few weeks have rekindled a new love for a familiar fruit - a new fascination with the potassium rich, neatly packaged banana. We have been touring through the countries where the bananas really do grow on trees. We had crossed the border that morning from Peru into Ecuador, and the countryside immediately burst into banana plantations. My vision was filled only with banana trees, great big bushes supporting the weight of banana bunches containing 100 or more pieces of fruit, not 6 or 7 like the grocery store variety. And some that we drove by where tied up in bags, still hanging from the tree, as if someone had just gone shopping and selected that bunch, and had bagged it to take home. The banana stands on the side of the road were so numerous that I concluded that Ecuadorians subsist on bananas. There were more varieties that I would know what to do with: 2 inch baby bananas, long skinny Chiquitas, red skins and green skins. One night we opened a banana to find a pink fruit inside, and we chewed and chewed and chewed our way through the not-so-sweet fruit and decided we had selected a banana of the cooking variety.
I was curious to know if Ecuadorians really ate all the bananas we were passing. When we finally reached the first town past the border, we came upon rows and rows of stands where they were roasting bananas to chocolaty brown, as if they were ears of corn. The air was filled with a nice smoky smell and I became immediately obsessed; I just knew that a roasted banana had to taste good -and I just had to try one. We finally stopped at a restaurant where there was not a single banana listed on the menu. But curiosity was eating me up, so I asked the waitress if there were any cooked bananas around, and she said yes. They were certainly the garnish of all of the plates, so why couldn't she just serve me up one to taste. The little taste turned into a banana deluge when the waitress returned with a true banana "degustación" plate. On the left were long skinny strips of bananas cut like French fries - hard on the outside, breaking open to a soft creamy flesh inside - much like a French fry - beckoning for salt and all. The right side of the plate was covered with mushy rectangles of a caramel brown color. The pan-fried banana slices tasted ever so slightly sweet and were ready to be mashed into rice. As I waited for my order of ceviche to arrive (the one dish that perhaps does not combine with fried bananas), the waitress returned with yet another plate of the French fry style bananas - just to make sure I tried them really hot.
That lunch may have satiated my banana craving, but it was only the beginning of the chain of banana recipes we would try as we headed north through the tropics. When we arrived in Colombia, banana soup was on the menu and this went a long way to confirm a theory I had that bananas are as much a staple part of the South American diet as potatoes. Every lunch for a week as we crossed Colombia consisted of an entrée of banana soup. It was always listed as "soup of the day", and when I would ask the waiter to describe the soup, they did not have the words I could understand - they could only say that it was a base of bananas and, "full of vitamins." Whatever the colorful mixture of vegetables was, it always tasted savory and chunks of banana would distinguish themselves from potatoes with their faint little seeds.
In a roadside parillada (grill) just outside of Bogotá, Enric and I sat down to plates of grilled meat with a Bar-B-Que'd banana on the side. What an amazing wonderful addition that was! The slightly sweet thick warmth of charred banana flowed between the grain of the meat and fused with Enric's steak and my chicken as if there was no better combination for grilled meat than a grilled banana.
I was happy to see big green plantains in the produce basket of the sailboat we took from Cartegena, Colombia to Panamá. When it finally came time to decide how to prepare the bananas that would accompany our rice and lentil lunch, a debate surged over "better baked or fried?" Javier described the way he would sauté the slices in oil - until they turned caramel brown and limp, and when he said how he would drizzle the sauce over the rice, I though he would fall over in delirium. But reality was in favor of baking - the other cook pointed out that the stove was already occupied with the pots of rice and lentils, and that perhaps if the bananas were covered in oil and slipped into the oven, they would taste just as good. Javier shrugged his shoulders, his fantasy was burst, and it no longer interested him to help out in the kitchen. The truth is that the baked bananas were delicious. The fork sliced easily through the light toasty and sometimes-charred exterior and the warmth soft banana meat inside oozed into a dance with the hot rice and lentils. This is the way every food combination should be.
I encountered very few of my "known" banana favorites from life in the USA, like banana bread and banana muffins. When we did find them, we were usually in a gringo-infested tourist joint. Banana smoothies however were prevalent, and at less than $1 became a temporary staple.
I may have been ignorant to plantains and perhaps they are just as much a part of the diet in the Southern USA than in South and Central America, but I am sure hoping to find them in the produce section of Safeway or Ralph's. I look forward to sliding new flavors into my dishes, with the added confidence that it is hard to go wrong with bananas.
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